This Star Wars ‘Return Of The Jedi’ Pinball Game Trailer Looks Pretty Ridiculous

Call me old-fashioned, but I remember a time when a pinball game used to be about a little silver ball bouncing off a couple bells as a few bros enjoyed a Mountain Dew and a slice of pepperoni pizza. It wasn’t about iPads, incredible 3D graphics and shameless attempts to invade every imaginable arena of pop culture as a means of milking every last penny from every last person. But then, the pinball industry took a huge hit with 1988’s The Accused, so I guess it makes sense that Lucasarts and Zen Studios would want to raise the bar higher than ever with the new Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi pinball table for Star Wars Pinball.

The new trailer for the game reveals absurd graphics and all the callbacks to the third film of the original trilogy, and I’m even told that when you defeat the Death Star in this game, Luke actually admits to Leia that their kiss was pretty creepy. Okay, I wasn’t actually told that.

I love how they use sound-a-like voice actors so they wouldn’t have to pay the original cast. Looks cool, though, but I don’t believe that speeder bike storm trooper would’ve been able to shoot that mass to turn it into multiple balls in just one shot. We know how good their aim is.

I really really don’t like the majority of Zen’s tables and I fucking hate their physics engine. Zen Pinball’s tables are great examples of how NOT to design tables. I’ve never been a huge fan of virtual pinball as it never felt even close to the real thing. But then this happened:

So Pinball Arcade came out from Farsight Studios and It IS pinball. They restore actual real world classic tables from classic companies like Stern and Williams and they even use the original ROM to run the table inside their physics sandbox and theirs is a lot more realistic than the floaty gimmicky bullshit that Zen makes.
They just finished the Terminator 2 table on kickstarter and they are planning on doing the Addams Family table next. And Pinball Arcade already has some serious classics like the Star Trek table, Elvira, Twilight Zone, Bride of Pinbot etc.

This isn’t the first Star Wars-themed table from Zen. Pinball FX 2 features three really awesome Star Wars tables, including Empire Strikes Back. There are also a ton of ridiculously badass Marvel tables.